Blog

characters, writing

The Rules

elouisebates

I was reading The Secret Adversary for about the millionth time this weekend, and when I got to the part where Tommy acted completely out of character, I had to stop and ponder it for a few moments.

James Warwick as Tommy Beresford

I love that part. It’s one of my favorites. Sober, steady, practical Tommy acts completely impulsively, and it’s way better than if the same action was taken by Tuppence, who is KNOWN for her impulsiveness.

Now, most of the time, when a character does something completely foreign to their personality, it drives me nuts. So why does it work so well for Tommy?

I think it’s because Christie, as the narrator (she’s not quite an omniscient narrator in this one, but it’s definitely not a tight third-person POV) acknowledges that he’s acting OOC, and so does Tommy himself. I also think it’s because it really does happen, in real life, that the predictable steady people DO occasionally get wild impulses, and give into them without understanding the why or the how of it. So even though it’s OOC, it’s still believable, and it makes for a great scene, and builds up to some that are even better.

I like reading authors like Christie, who wrote before the era of “Rules for Writing,” and wouldn’t have cared a fig for them if she did (she scatters adverbs wildly) (haha – get it? Wildly? OK, I’m done). She wrote according to her own internal rules, and she never broke them, and it shows.

I break a lot of the so-called Rules in my own writing. But I have a set of my own rules, and the few times I’ve tried (guiltily) to break them, it makes a mess. And sometimes when I start to fret about The Rules, I remind myself of Christie, and then I feel better. Not that I’m the genius she was! But like her, my rules are more important to follow than The Rules.

As long as you understand what you’re doing and why, and you are doing it deliberately, I think The Rules should go out the window.

Where do you stand on the matter?

Life Talk, seasons, writing

April, May, Tulips, and Writing

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I hope you all has a wonderful Easter! We did; my husband’s family came out for the weekend, and we thoroughly enjoyed spending time together, filling and hiding plastic eggs for the kids to hunt on Sunday after church, and eating all the food I could keep coming out of my kitchen. We were a surprisingly hungry bunch this weekend!

As much as I loved having family out, and visiting them in our turn, I must confess to a sneaking sense of relief and freedom as we enter the month of April. Why? Because we have NOTHING planned. No trips, no people coming out to see us, nothing. Just living.

Now, I have learned in the last almost-decade of my married life that this is usually when life decides to laugh heartily at our expense and whack us on the nose with a broomstick. So I’m fully expecting Things to Happen. Even so, I’m reveling in the illusion of freedom right now.

We can finally start following our schedule! I can finish sewing the kids’ spring clothes! I can get more writing done! We’ll be able to do more than two days of school in a week! I can keep practicing driving so as to be more comfortable behind the wheel by the time we move! Carl and I can work together on the weekends to sort, organize, and pack boxes so that I don’t get completely overwhelmed by it all the week before we move!

(I am so laughing at myself even as I type this. This is NOT going to happen.)

Also of excitement to me are two things happening in May (in the merry, merry month of May …). One: my mother is getting her Master’s! We’re going up north for her graduation ceremony, and THEN we’re going just a little further north to go to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa, Canada.

This was an excursion we made most years when I was a kid, and Carl and I have wanted to go up every year since we were dating, and never made it. This year I said since we were already going to be so close (my parents live just south of the US-Canada border) at the right time of year, we WERE going to go. And so we are making sure our passports are up to date and GOING. I can’t wait. The girls are going to be blown away by so many tulips in one place, and downtown Ottawa is always worth a visit even without the flowers. Hurrah!

The second thing will actually happen before the first (confused yet?). For Mother’s Day weekend, happening before my mom’s graduation, Carl is going to take the kids to visit his mom. Where will I be during this? I’m SO glad you asked. I will be having a couple days entirely to myself. Not Here. Not at home, surrounded by all the Things I need to do every day, mocking me whenever I take the time to write. Not at his mother’s, where I still have to be mommy and wife (and daughter-in-law) even though we aren’t home. They are going to drop me off somewhere between our house and his mother’s, and I will have a real-live solo writing retreat. It’s my (belated)birthday present/(current)Mother’s Day present/(future)keeping everything functioning while Carl’s in seminary present.

So, any recommendations for a good place to stay in the Berkshires or southern Vermont for a solo writing retreat with no car?

And how is April looking for you?

Ever been to the Tulip Festival in Ottawa?

Did you have a nice Easter?

(A picture from last spring, taken at a park here in our city. Now imagine that, plus thousands more. THAT’S what it will be like in Ottawa.)

God, Life Talk

Moving Forward

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Listening to Neverwhere on BBC Radio 4. Tying a quilt. Taking quick breaks for Twitter and blog posts. Writing a drabble for a Prydain challenge on ff.net.

That’s my Sunday night. How’s yours?

This past week was a rough one. Lot of emotions stirred up by events happening in the world. You know how that goes? Most of the time, you’re aware of tragedies and injustices, and you feel sorrow, but it doesn’t affect you that much – it can’t, because you still have to live and work and love, and if you collapse under every weight, you simply can’t function. But then … then some days, it just all piles up, and suddenly it’s too much, and you just have to stop and weep for a little while, before you can pick yourself up and keep fighting the good fight.

This past week was a “stop and weep” week for me. But now I’m back on my feet, back to being able to enjoy simple pleasures, to delight in my family and the gifts God has given me, back to moving forward and shining light in a darkened world.

(And yes, I am aware that something as dark as Neverwhere is an odd listening choice when one is cheering up, but oh my, it is fascinating. The brilliance alone makes it a worthwhile listen.)

In happier news, I have been doing better at sticking with a schedule and getting things accomplished this past week! Slow and steady does it, not freaking out if I slip off schedule, and not caring if it’s more boring to follow a schedule than to go about life at my own whimsy.

Also, I made a raspberry cheesecake. YUM.

So, here’s to a better week this week than last. Here’s to carrying the light through the darkness no matter what.

Life Talk, philosophy

Disorganized

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I am the least organized person I know.

I like things to be neat and organized and tidy and simple, but when I try to make them that way myself … chaos ensues.

(Curiously enough, when I was department manager at the hardware store, I did NOT have that problem. I ran one dept and assisted with two others, and kept all of them in STUNNINGLY organized condition, better than almost any of the others in the entire store. Which is odd. And the only time/place in my life where that has happened.)

Yesterday was my birthday, and my husband cleaned the kitchen for me after dinner. Except he didn’t just clean, he tidied and organized and threw things away and rearranged other things and picked up items that had been on the counters for so long I’d stopped even seeing them, and at the end of the night, I stood there thinking, “huh. I could have done any of this at any time, but it never even occurred to me. Why not?”

Part of my problem is that I’m scatter-brained. Just ask anyone who knows me. My parents used to joke that they always knew how I’d spent my day by following the trail of shoes, books, and teacups through the house. I just never even noticed I was leaving them behind! It’s even worse when I’m cleaning – I hop from one thing to another to another without ever finishing any task, ending the day by feeling exhausted and accomplishing nothing. I am really bad at time-management – I have a beautifully written schedule pinned on my fridge, and I never, ever manage to follow it. (In my defense, we haven’t had one week since October where all four of us have been healthy. It’s been a sick, sick winter, which makes it nearly impossible to stick to any kind of a schedule.) I always have marvelous, and even reasonable goals, and then I get derailed almost immediately.

Part of the problem is that there’s just SO MUCH that I want/need to be doing. Keep the house clean and running smoothly. Raise the kids. Teach the kids. Write. Self-publish. Sew. Cook all the meals (from scratch). Skate. Learn to draw so I can teach the kids. Study. Along with raising and teaching the kids, train them to become independent adults. LAUNDRY. And oh yeah, have a relationship with my husband and try to make time for friends as well. Not to mention make sure I get that bit of alone time each week so necessary for my introverted soul.

I know a lot of people manage to juggle all those things effortlessly. I’m still figuring it out, and dropping almost ALL the balls constantly in the process. I think I spend more time picking the balls off the ground than I do tossing them through the air!

Add to all that the very deep desire to NOT live a mundane life, to do more than just muddle along. One of my deepest fears is that when I die, what’s going on my tombstone is “Well, at least she tried.” This life is so short, so precious, I don’t want to spend it flustered and frustrated and frittering it away! I want to really live, to taste every moment. No, I’m not buying into the lie that says “you have to enjoy every minute of while your kids are small/while you are young/while whatever it is the speaker currently wants you to feel guilty about not savoring.” I’ve fallen down that pit before, and I won’t go back.

But neither do I want to, as I mentioned before, spend my life just muddling along, half-heartedly attempting many things without really enjoying or living anything.

So, any advice for this scatter-brained, introverted, disorganized, mummy-wife-and-mother-and-writer on how to stop wasting my time, and start making the most of my days?

Have at it in the comments!

heroes, heroines, philosophy

Once Upon a Time, and Good vs Evil

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Once Upon a Time is one of my favorite shows (I almost wrote “new” favorite shows, but since it is more than halfway through its second season, I can’t really call it new anymore, can I? I still think of NCIS:LA as new, though, and it’s in its fourth season. I guess it just takes me a really long time to get used to a show!). I am not quite as enamored of it as I was in its first season, but I still really enjoy it. I’d enjoy it more if all of the characters except, possibly, Gold and Granny, didn’t do really stupid things on a really regular basis, and then act shocked when said stupid decisions come back to haunt them, but even so. It’s a fun show to watch.

Last Sunday’s episode really got me thinking. (Ahead lie theme-spoilers, though I won’t be giving any details away. Still, stop reading if you haven’t seen it and don’t want to know anything about it.)

*****

*****

*****

Still here? Right.

At the end of this episode, it looked like Evil had taken another giant leap forward toward defeating good. And Snow was sick of it. Tired of doing the right thing every time, and coming out poorer for it. Tired of always showing mercy and having it come back around to haunt her. Tired of always taking the high road, when it seemed only to hurt those she loved.

David tried to comfort her, but let’s face it, David is really good at hitting things and making noble-sounding proclamations, not so much at … well, anything else. So his comforting speech and meant-to-be-encouraging words fell flat. In fact, he was lucky, because if I’d been Snow, I would have decked him for his lame, cliched words. She just basically ignored him. Kind, kind Snow.

Here’s what he should have said:

“You are absolutely right. We have been fighting evil our entire lives, and every time we think we’ve won, it crops back up and steals our happy ending. But that’s the thing, isn’t it? We aren’t fighting for our own happy ending. We’re fighting for Emma’s happy ending, for Henry’s. If we are just fighting for ourselves, how are we any different? Regina wants her happy ending, and we want ours. The means we take to that end are different, but they’re both driven by selfish motivations.

“What makes us different, is that we aren’t just fighting for ourselves. We are fighting to make the world – both this world and our other home – better for everyone. Safer. We are fighting so our daughter and grandson can live in freedom, instead of in bondage to evil.

“And yes, I know that you are tired. It’s okay to be tired. It’s okay to want to lay this burden down. It’s understandable that you feel it isn’t worth it. That’s why I’m here. I still believe. I’ll carry you through this period of doubt, and someday, when I’m the one struggling, you’ll carry me. That’s what we do for each other.”

I think sometimes, especially in fantasy, it’s almost easier to make Evil nuanced than Good. We’re been trained to go against the cliched “bad for the sake of being bad” guy, giving them all kinds of depth and interest, but in this era of anti-heroes, it can be hard to remember what it is that makes the true hero stand out.

I recently re-read Stephen Lawhead’s Taliesin, and while it isn’t the brilliant, gripping prose I remembered it being when I was eleven and enthralled by it all, parts of it did still stand out to me with a shining, brilliant light. The notion of true heroism being fighting against the dark even when you know it’s hopeless, even when you know you will lose, simply because it is the Right Thing, and because you have faith that eventually, even if you’re not there to see it, light will overcome the darkness, and you want to be a part, however small, of that light.

I’m interested to see where OUAT goes with this “Dark Snow” theme they’ve brought up. I hope they’ll use it as a chance to bring in some of these deeper motivations behind “being good.” Given their track record, I kind of doubt it, but I can hope, right?

Do you watch Once Upon a Time? Are there any TV shows that you do watch that cause you to ponder philosophical questions on a semi-regular basis? Do you think it’s harder to make a hero interesting than it is to make the villain sympathetic?

Books, writing

Overcoming Adversity Launch Day

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It’s the Overcoming Adversity Anthology launch day!

Cover design by DR Cartwright, from a concept by Ella Wilson
Blurb:
A collection of seventy moving and uplifting original pieces – real life, flash fiction, and poetry – about battling against the odds and the ultimate triumph of the human spirit. The contributors include Amazon bestselling authors Alex J. Cavanaugh and Kyra Lennon, and the cream of upcoming talent.

The anthology is part of a fundraising effort to send the editor’s stepson, Andrew McNaughton, to a specialist college in England. Andrew has cerebral palsy, and is a remarkable young man with a promising future. However, the free further education options offered in his own country of Scotland will not challenge him and allow him to progress. In order to access the education he deserves, Andrew will have to pay exorbitant fees, thus creating a situation of discrimination.

Help us get Andrew to college by buying a book that runs the full gamut of human emotions, ultimately leaving you inspired and glad to be alive. Whatever struggles you are going through, our sincere hope is that this book will help.

Purchase Links:

(Paperback coming soon)

Editor Bio: Nick Wilford is a writer and stay-at-home dad. Once a journalist, he now makes use of those rare times when the house is quiet to explore the realms of fiction. When not writing he can usually be found spending time with his family or cleaning something. He has four short stories published in Writer’s Muse magazine. Nick is also co-running a campaign to get a dedicated specialist college built in Scotland. Visit him at http://nickwilford.blogspot.co.uk/.

~ * ~

It was such a privilege to be able to participate in this anthology. The poem I wrote, Memory, ended up being really special to me, and a chance to honor my grandparents. Thank you for this opportunity, Nick, and I hope it succeeds even beyond everyone’s wildest dreams!

Now, faithful blog readers, go forth and buy!
editing

Writer’s Sludge

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I haven’t written one word – save for blog posts, FB and Twitter updates, and the occasional short email – in three weeks.

Writer’s block, you ask?

Not exactly.

More like Writer’s Sludge.

I’m editing. I’m actually in the easy stage of editing, where all the major changes have been made and the end is in sight. I should be able to tackle this no problem, right?

Unfortunately, editing is also the tricky stage, when I need to focus all my attention on the task before me. Which means I can’t do it during the day, when the kids need me. Even putting on a movie doesn’t help (yes, I do resort to that sometimes – I never claimed to be Supermom), because I’m still in “mom” mode, not “writer” mode.

Up until the plague sweeping our house, I had been getting to the library for an hour on Fridays after Carl got home, and even that one hour of writing a week was fantastic. But with at least one of us being sick for almost the entire month of February, that just stopped happening.

Editing in the evenings, after the kids are in bed, you suggest? Yes. I should do that. I often have grand plans throughout the day of doing that. But usually by the time 8:00 rolls around and the kids are asleep, all I can do is curl up in the recliner and read fluffy books. My plans of a winter spent delving into different mythologies has fallen through, too! I’ve fallen back on comfort reads, Agatha Christie and Patricia C Wrede and Miss Read. All good books, but none of which require me to stretch my brain.

Which means, of course, that even now that we’re all (rap wood) healthy again, and I could be working on the MS again, my creative muscles have fallen out of use, and my natural laziness is creeping back to the forefront of my personality, instead of locked tightly in the back, where I usually try to keep it contained.

So I write this blog post in hopes that by being honest and open about this, it will trigger something in me, maybe even that famous stubbornness and contrariness that I’m known for throughout my family and friends, and I’ll start writing again immediately after posting this.

Even though I haven’t been writing/editing, I have started exercising some of my creative muscles again recently. See?

Now I just need to translate that into writing! Hmm … maybe if Maia had to deal with pirates …


Books, fantasy, heroes, heroines, influences, philosophy, stories

The Importance of Story

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Heroes, heroism, and what all that entails, is a fairly common theme on this blog. It wasn’t until I read through Diana Wynne Jones’ essay collection, followed by The Wand in the Word, that I started to understand some of my impulses that drive me to contemplate such ideas, and to search for ways to bring them into my stories without even realizing it.
We as a society, especially here in America, are in desperate need of heroes. Not even real-life heroes, though those are (obviously) important, but heroes of mythical stature, for us to look up to and emulate without even knowing it. America is a funny land: we have absorbed so many cultures to make up this beautiful, multi-facted nation, and yet we haven’t embraced any of their myths – nor do most of us embrace the mythos of the Native Americans, which is beautiful and rich and deep.
Instead of myths and legends reaching back into a shadowy past, showing us heroes and heroines and quests and striving for a goal more noble, we have generations of Americans raised on Disney princesses and Power Rangers as children, vampires and dystopias as teenagers, gossip magazines and reality television as young adults. Not all of those things are bad – but they aren’t anything close to enough.
We have no King Arthur, no rich carpet of legend rolling out beneath our feet, for us to tread upon and absorb without even knowing it. The closest thing we have in this country to a cultural mythos are comic book heroes, and while those have their own value, they don’t have the weight of age behind them.
That’s not something I can change. I don’t have a TARDIS, I can’t pop back in time to create another Beowulf.
But I, personally, have a strong sense of the importance of heroes. As a kid, I fought imaginary dragons in my back yard. I believed in standing up for the underdog, even in my kindergarten class, wearing a pretty dress with my hair in two long braids, not letting anyone bully Thomas because he didn’t fit in. How did that happen (aside from my parents’ teaching)?
The books I read, the Stories I learned. What books did I grow up reading? Books by Lloyd Alexander, Susan Cooper, CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Brian Jacques, Edward Eager, E Nesbit, L Frank Baum …
People say fantasy doesn’t matter? That fantasy books aren’t Real Books?
It is fantasy, myth, legend, the hero seeking to save others, the beauty of the quest through danger to achieve salvation, that will rescue this world from falling into utter darkness.
In the end, fantasy books are the most Real Books out there. They just might be the most important books you will ever read.
They are certainly the most important books I will ever write.
Books, children

Reading Corner

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In my quest to encourage the girls to read, read often, read for the sheer love of it, I set up one corner of our living room with a pile of blankets, two king-size pillows, and a stack of books, and told them this corner was ONLY for reading. No playing with toys, no pretending to take naps, we only curl up here when we want to read.

They loved it at first. Then they whined because I wouldn’t let them turn it into a tent. Part of me felt ridiculous for sticking to my guns about it, but I needed it to be special, in order for reading to be special. So I didn’t make a big deal, just reminded them that they had an entire house they could play in, they could keep one corner for reading.

Slowly, over the course of a week or so, they got used to the idea. I would come into the room to see Joy sitting there with a book. Grace would come down after her nap and cuddle up with a blanket and a picture book until she woke up fully.

And every once in a while, delight of delights, they would sit down together, and Joy would read aloud to Grace.

Now they are doing that all over the house. Joy curls up in the recliner with Frog and Toad are Friends. Grace plops down in the middle of the floor a collection of fairy tales. They sit on top of their Lego crates, prop The Little Red Hen on the coffee table, and Joy reads while Grace provides sound effects.

I know I talk fairly frequently on here about my kids and their reading habits. That’s because it is so vitally important to me right now! They don’t have to love the same sort of books that I do. They don’t have to be the type of person to get lost in another world, like I do. Carl takes great joy in sitting down with a commentary on the minor prophets, but can barely get through most fiction. And that’s fine, too.

The important thing is that the kids are learning the true magic of the written word, in whatever form takes their fancy.

And if putting an old comforter down in one corner of the house helps with that? Well, you can be sure that comforter is going to come with us no matter where we move.

Uncategorized

An Elvish Valentine

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One of my oldest friends shared this on my FB wall last week. Carl and I both died of laughter, watched all the other videos in this series, and promptly died laughing again.
We aren’t exactly romantics.
But we do know how to appreciate a good orc-bashing.
What more does one need in a soul mate?
Happy Valentine’s Day from me and mine, to you and yours.